


Day By Day

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Bletchley Circle
Genre: Coping, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the details surrounding her encounter with Cavendish, and consequently her anguish, are considered a state secret, Susan tries to carry on with her normal, mundane life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day By Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintgil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintgil/gifts).



Even when it feels like the mundane routine of mornings should have changed, Susan finds that they are astonishingly the same. Even after it’s all over with, there is no grand change, no way to recapture the meaning she had in her secret past life. She finds herself in a routine like before, all the same, except that now her nights are sleepless. Most of the time, she lies awake next to Timothy and counts the sounds from the closet, reminding herself that they are nothing more than the harmless creaking of the house. Her dreams are dark, like the cellar Cavendish died in, only she knows in them that he’s alive and coming for her.

Susan once believed herself an eminently sensible sort of woman, who took no nonsense and sought the rational answer to whatever problem was placed before her. There is no rational answer to the kind of anxiety that lives in her now, occupying the empty corners of her mind that are unengaged by the mundane living she has with Timothy and the children. She is distracted, frightened at times and overwhelmingly guilty at others. She feels guilty for dwelling on the Cavendish case when Lucy was so badly hurt and is now alone with Millie, ashamed that part of her was thrilled with the adventure to break up the life she has not been altogether happy in. What would it mean to be excited by that, knowing the depths of its horrors, that she does not truly want to relive it. The thoughts are there, however, and Susan cannot forget them.

She often finds herself wishing that she were only the sort of woman who would only break the oath she made, swearing herself to secrecy. If only, then perhaps she could explain to Timothy the absences before, and the ones now, where she stares into oblivion fighting back a host of demons with Cavendish’s dying words on their tongues. Perhaps then Timothy would understand why she has been keeping this part of herself away from him and the children. Perhaps then she would fuse into a whole woman once more, not disparate pieces scattered to the wind and carried whichever way the world wills. 

Susan didn’t once feel like this. Surely, there was a time where she was wholly herself, but she cannot remember quite when that was, especially not when lying next to Timothy and feeling as if there’s an inescapable abyss between them.

When morning comes and she gets up to make tea and toast in her dressing gown, all the despairs and fears are locked tight in her bedroom closet again, and Susan tries bravely to face the day ahead without flinching.

*

“You’re distracted.”

Millie is unchanged, Susan has noticed, and wonders how she manages it, seeing as she was the one who had been capable of pulling the trigger and killing Cavendish. Where Susan has not been sleeping, Millie looks equal parts intrigued and unbothered by the flow of the world around her. Even losing her job hadn’t bothered her, in the end, though she’s started a new one, an unassuming office job that allows her to take smoke breaks and leave for lunch, as long as she finishes the stacks of paperwork that accumulate on her desk. Susan is a little envious of her, but recognizes the instinct for what it is: merely a distraction from the sorts of thoughts that have been plaguing her lately. Lucy works a few blocks away at a library, but that’s the product of Jean’s work, of course, and she’ll be working in the stacks through her lunch break. Susan doesn’t really want to see her just then, though, because she still feels guilty whenever the light catches the fading remnant of a scar on Lucy’s porcelain face. 

Susan tries for a surprised and otherwise pleasant smile. “Just carried away with my thoughts, I think.”

The expression Millie levels on her while pulling on her cigarette brooks no argument with her first statement, and so Susan looks away instead. 

Millie allows her to stand quietly for a few more minutes with her hands in her coat pockets before stubbing out her cigarette and taking her arm and leading her on. They were simply going to have lunch, and Susan did want to talk about this all somehow, but suddenly she feels tight and anxious all over. 

“It’s about Cavendish, isn’t it?” Millie hazards the guess when they’ve settled at the counter, while Susan is searching her bag for something. Her voice is very quiet, because of course she doesn’t want anyone to hear. The papers have been unusually silent on the matter of the real killer’s capture, but Susan hardly needs to guess why. It’s the same reason she has been up at night, guilty over Timothy and the children, who might never have been in any danger at all if it weren’t for her and her secrets. 

“Of course it is,” Susan finally sighs, but she feels no better for it. Millie doesn’t offer her any kind of consolation. Susan doesn’t think she expected anything, either. 

They talk about something else for the rest of Millie’s break, and when Susan is about to leave her office and go back to her house, Millie grabs her hand and looks at her severely. 

“You must be gentle to yourself, Susan,” she instructs firmly, squeezing gently once and releasing her. 

For a moment that Susan expects to end, but it never does, she feels as if the slightest of weights has been lifted off her chest. Not everything, only a start. She nods and watches Millie retreat up into her office job. 

This time, she’s not very jealous to see her go on to that sort of life that she does not and cannot have, and walks home with her head down.

*

The washing is waiting for her on the line when she arrives home that afternoon, where she had placed it earlier in the morning. Susan watches it wave on a late-autumn breeze before setting her things aside and walking out to the yard to fold it into a basket and bring it in. There won’t be many more days where she can do this, she thinks absently, and it strikes her just how mundanely carefree the thought is, absent her recent demons.

Susan feels someone watching her as she’s finishing with one of the bedsheets, and turns slowly, her heart hammering in her chest. An elderly woman on the street bows her head in greeting, tittering quietly, and Susan swallows back her irrational fear. This is her life, what she has and who she is now. It could be more yet, she knows, but it is where she is. Susan lifts her hand to wave to the old woman, and picks up the basket.

Gentle was what Millie had suggested, and gentle is difficult for Susan, who has been trying to rationalize this despair away, face it down rather than understand where it’s come from. She supposes she could try being a little gentler on this life, on herself, one day at a time, and prove to herself more than to Cavendish or any demon that she is greater than it.


End file.
